If You Can Get Past the Drug Use and Raunchy Language, You'll See That 'Bachelorette' Works Well

Similarities between guy-centric R-rated comedies often go unmentioned (or at least mentioned less prominently), even though, paradoxically, there are far more of them than female-driven enterprises like Bachelorette.

It's not surprising, but it is disappointing, that a movie like Bachelorette (just out on Blu-ray) can be dismissed as just more girls behaving badly following Bridesmaids, which itself garnered a vaguely insulting "The Hangover for women" tag. Why The Hangover gets to be patient zero of raunchy comedies, I'm not so sure; it's basically just a remake of Dude, Where's My Car? (and not even the best remake: that would be Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle). But similarities between guy-centric R-rated comedies often go unmentioned (or at least mentioned less prominently), even though, paradoxically, there are far more of them than female-driven enterprises like Bachelorette.

For the record: Bachelorette is based on a play by Leslye Headland, written well before Bridesmaids turned the idea of women fighting at a wedding over issues that cut deeper than who gets to get married at the Plaza into something that seemed, however briefly, marketable. For another record: the film adaptation of that play is also directed by Headland, representing an unfortunate rarity (even the excellent Bridesmaids was directed by a guy). I haven't seen Headland's play, but I have a suspicion it works even better on film – if only because Bachelorette does work exceedingly well.

Even more than Bridesmaids, Headland's film riffs on the wedding milieu of so many female-driven Hollywood comedies. It opens intercutting a conversation between Regan (Kirsten Dunst) and her less skinny, less icy friend Becky (Rebel Wilson) with Reagan conference-calling their other high school friends Gena (Lizzy Caplan) and Katie (Isla Fisher) to share Becky's news: she's engaged. The rest of the movie takes place over the 24 hours leading up to Becky's wedding; maid of honor Regan tries to put a steely smile over her deep and angry discomfort over her less glam friend beating her to the alter, while Gena and Katie enthusiastically self-medicate to get themselves through the event.

Headland's tart, occasionally broad script observes the regression and hostility the wedding dredges up in these women -- who snipe at each other even when united in disgust against the happy event. Actually, Fisher's Katie doesn't do much sniping; her id, less unpleasant but just as dangerous, is spacier and more free-associative than the sarcastic and self-loathing Gena or the tightly wound Regan -- and that's before they all do a bunch of cocaine. And that self-loathing sniping takes place before even a catastrophe befalls Becky's wedding dress, and her three hapless, mean friends take it upon themselves to fix what they may have ruined.

This may make Bachelorette sound like an empty exercise in ante-raising nastiness, a decathlon of unlikable behavior. But once you get past the drug use (heavy, troubling) and raunchy dialogue (more familiar, less shocking), the movie itself isn't particularly sour or mean. The (mostly) behind-the-back cruelty heaped on Becky upon closer look indicates a metastasized familiarity, the insecurities of young women left to fester as they approach their 30s.

Becky has clearly grown apart from her high school friends; one reason their initial fits of awkward toasts and inappropriate comments don't immediately torpedo the pre-wedding festivities is that Gena, Katie, and even Regan are too far on the periphery to pay much mind. The movie has a vivid undercurrent of sadness, even when it appears to revel in misbehavior.

It's also very funny, the kind of comedy where stars perfectly amplify their personas and strengths. Dunst plays the sort of Type A personality rom-coms like to treat as a quirky perfectionist with a dash of klutz, but her Regan is harder and sadder than this archetype -- and, hilariously, still an expert at running the show, even when brimming over with contempt. In a bravura late-movie sequence, she storms through a hotel suite in circles, buying time for her waylaid friends and that missing wedding dress.

Caplan gets to play both cutting and wounded opposite her Party Down partner Adam Scott as Clyde, her high-school ex (they're "the Tracy and Hepburn of shit no one sees," Headland enthuses on her commentary track), and Fisher is wonderful as the ditz who calls almost everyone she meets 'beautiful', while barely learning anyone's names. A too-short blooper reel and Headland's commentary track noting when the actors improved one of her lines confirm the cast's strengths.

Being a writer first, Headland spends a lot of her commentary talking about the film's screenplay, moreso than the visuals: she speaks at length about the theme of using drugs or eating disorders or other seemingly self-destructive behavior not to actually destruct, but to "appear perfect or feel perfect", as she puts it. But Bachelorette has a degree of visual sophistication you might not expect from a first-time director coming in from theater; Headland knows how to frame her actors, together and apart. Perhaps the best shot of the movie shows Gena and Clyde side by side, listening to the Proclaimers on an old mixtape (the movie is awash in '90s reference points). Headland holds the shot for a full two minutes, attuned to her actors' expressive silence.

Headland also mentions on her commentary that she likes movies that "assume you're interested in the characters and just go", and that confidence may be why Bachelorette doesn't seem self-enamored of the bad behavior it depicts (it makes the smirking subtext of The Hangover actual text, and if that sounds less than subtle, recall how little The Hangover really says about anything). Ultimately, the movie isn't about a bachelorette party gone wrong; it's about three lives gone wrong in a measure of increments, and the flailing attempts to repair them.

White Hills epic '80s callback
Stop Mute Defeat is a determined march against encroaching imperial darkness; their eyes boring into the shadows for danger but they're aware that blinding lights can kill and distort truth. From "Overlord's" dark stomp casting nets for totalitarian warnings to "Attack Mode", which roars in with the tribal certainty that we can survive the madness if we keep our wits, the record is a true and timely win for Dave W. and Ego Sensation. Martin Bisi and the poster band's mysterious but relevant cool make a great team and deliver one of their least psych yet most mind destroying records to date. Much like the first time you heard Joy Division or early Pigface, for example, you'll experience being startled at first before becoming addicted to the band's unique microcosm of dystopia that is simultaneously corrupting and seducing your ears. - Morgan Y. Evans

The year in song reflected the state of the world around us. Here are the 70 songs that spoke to us this year.

70. The Horrors - "Machine"

On their fifth album V, the Horrors expand on the bright, psychedelic territory they explored with Luminous, anchoring the ten new tracks with retro synths and guitar fuzz freakouts. "Machine" is the delicious outlier and the most vitriolic cut on the record, with Faris Badwan belting out accusations to the song's subject, who may even be us. The concept of alienation is nothing new, but here the Brits incorporate a beautiful metaphor of an insect trapped in amber as an illustration of the human caught within modernity. Whether our trappings are technological, psychological, or something else entirely makes the statement all the more chilling. - Tristan Kneschke

"...when the history books get written about this era, they'll show that the music community recognized the potential impacts and were strong leaders." An interview with Kevin Erickson of Future of Music Coalition.

Last week, the musician Phil Elverum, a.k.a. Mount Eerie, celebrated the fact that his album A Crow Looked at Me had been ranked #3 on the New York Times' Best of 2017 list. You might expect that high praise from the prestigious newspaper would result in a significant spike in album sales. In a tweet, Elverum divulged that since making the list, he'd sold…six. Six copies.

Under the lens of cultural and historical context, as well as understanding the reflective nature of popular culture, it's hard not to read this film as a cautionary tale about the limitations of isolationism.

I recently spoke to a class full of students about Plato's "Allegory of the Cave". Actually, I mentioned Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" by prefacing that I understood the likelihood that no one had read it. Fortunately, two students had, which brought mild temporary relief. In an effort to close the gap of understanding (perhaps more a canyon or uncanny valley) I made the popular quick comparison between Plato's often cited work and the Wachowski siblings' cinema spectacle, The Matrix. What I didn't anticipate in that moment was complete and utter dissociation observable in collective wide-eyed stares. Example by comparison lost. Not a single student in a class of undergraduates had partaken of The Matrix in all its Dystopic future shock and CGI kung fu technobabble philosophy. My muted response in that moment: Whoa!

Allen Ginsberg and Robert Lowell at St. Mark's Church in New York City, 23 February 1977

Scholar Christopher Grobe crafts a series of individually satisfying case studies, then shows the strong threads between confessional poetry, performance art, and reality television, with stops along the way.

Tracing a thread from Robert Lowell to reality TV seems like an ominous task, and it is one that Christopher Grobe tackles by laying out several intertwining threads. The history of an idea, like confession, is only linear when we want to create a sensible structure, the "one damn thing after the next" that is the standing critique of creating historical accounts. The organization Grobe employs helps sensemaking.